by Pearl North
5
Initiation
Po was late for breakfast. By the time he got to the dining hall, nearly everyone was seated and there was no line. He took a bowl from the rack and held it out so Vale, a Libyrarian boy a year or two older than him, could ladle barley porridge into it. He nodded his thanks and turned, scanning the hall for a seat.
The large room was loud and busy with people talking, laughing, moving about from table to table, visiting, eating. How could they be so carefree, when so much was uncertain? Even the Redeemer doubted that the community could survive.
His conversation with Haly had left him with two utterly contradictory feelings. On the one hand, he was more terrified than ever, and on the other, a nameless hope now dwelled inside him, that he was not such a disaster as he’d thought. They left little room for his heartache over Queen Thela’s banishment.
“Po, come sit with us!”
Po looked in the direction of the voice and found Hilloa, Jaen, and Bethe waving him over. Pleasure at their invitation warmed him, despite his jumbled feelings.
“We heard that Queen Thela has forbidden any expat Ilysians from returning,” said Bethe.
“Not that you’d ever want to go back there anyway, being a boy,” said Hilloa. “But some of the Ilysian women are probably pretty upset about it.”
Po stirred his porridge. His chest was so tight with tangled objections, he couldn’t even begin to voice them.
“I bet they wish they’d let men into their army now.”
“Seven Tales, Bethe, is dating all you ever think about?” said Hilloa.
Bethe shrugged. “So I have a healthy libido, what’s wrong with that?”
“There are other things in the world,” noted Jaen.
“I’m just saying, if I were an Ilysian woman, and I knew I couldn’t go home, and I was facing the prospect of dating Singers…” She shuddered.
“Gross,” said Jaen. “They don’t even take initiation.”
“Well, and what makes you think they won’t nab all the Libyrarian boys?” said Hilloa, and she and Jaen laughed at the look on Bethe’s face.
“Maybe they don’t care. Ilysian boys aren’t initiated, are they?” said Bethe.
All three of them looked at him for an answer.
“Initiation?”
“Yeah, at the onset of adulthood. So you can’t accidentally make babies.”
“What?”
“It’s a surgical procedure.”
Po couldn’t conceal his horror. “You mean they’re castrated?” He’d had no idea.
“No, no, nothing like that. It’s just a small incision and a little plug is inserted to block the sperm.”
Po tried not to show his shock. Suddenly he felt sorry for Libyrarian males. They couldn’t sire daughters. “What happens to the men if they have no daughters to provide for them when they’re old?”
The women looked at him as if he’d said something surprising. Hilloa spoke. “Same thing everyone else does when they get old. Their clerks take care of them.”
“But then how do you reproduce?” Were they all ringtails, like in Kip’s story?
“There’s a procedure to reverse it, if the man’s been approved to reproduce.”
So many different elements of that statement horrified Po that he didn’t know where to begin, but it was the least overt and most sinister that found his voice. “If he’s been approved?”
“Don’t you practice birth control in Ilysies? I assumed, with women being in charge and all…”
“If a woman doesn’t want to bear a child she just doesn’t let her male copulate with her. There are a lot of ways for women to experience pleasure,” to the heartbreak of their males, he didn’t add. “Some women give birth and then a sister or mother or aunt raises the child. But such things are rare. Babies are prized in Ilysies, and motherhood is the most honored status a woman can achieve. No male would interfere with his own fertility. It would ruin him.”
The three women exchanged a look. Po could tell that they carefully kept their faces neutral, but there was no mistaking the pity in Bethe’s eyes, or the humor in Jaen’s. Hilloa turned her head, and he couldn’t see her face at all.
But as he left the dining hall, she came up alongside him. “Po.” She put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry if any of us hurt your feelings.”
He shook his head. “No, that’s okay. I want to do better. I do.”
She gave him a funny kind of smile and tilted her head. “You know, some of the Singer boys are taking the Libyrarian initiation. Because us Libyrarian girls won’t have anything to do with them if they don’t. We couldn’t risk getting pregnant, you see? An unplanned pregnancy is…Well, I guess it’s like hitting a woman would be to you.”
Icy shock ran through him at the words. “That bad?”
She nodded. “Yeah. For centuries we’ve been a small population in a resource-sparse environment. Reproduction not only has to be limited, but monitored. Not everyone is fit to have children together, no matter how much they might love each other and want to make a child. From the beginning, we’ve been disciplined about it. We have to be in order to survive.”
“What about now? With all the extra people, and once the fields start to produce, there’ll be enough food, right?”
She gave him a crooked smile. “Do you think we’re going to grow enough food? I hope so. But even then…I hope we don’t lose our way. I think it’s a good way. Maybe…people could have more choice in who they have a child with, but…I hope boys don’t stop getting initiated. I’d hate to have to worry about getting pregnant when I’m having fun. I want to study. I want to read and learn and then write about what I’ve learned. I want to help unravel the secrets of the Ancients. I can’t do all of that with a screaming infant on my hip.”
Po blinked. “Why not?”
“What?”
“Why can’t you do everything you want and still have babies? The women back home do. While the child’s an infant, she carries it with her. And then when they’re older, they trail after her or they’re looked after by a sibling or a sire or an aunt. Children are everywhere in Ilysies. Having children is expected. It’s part of life. There are no places children can’t go and so no places mothers can’t go. It would be unthinkable. Mothers are the ultimate authority. Motherhood makes a woman wise and powerful. Why would anyone want to limit that?
“I’ve noticed here, the babies are all in a crèche. Parents make time to visit them but other people actually take care of them. That’s very strange, I think.”
She stared at him a long time and Po realized he’d gone too far. Wasn’t he supposed to be more forthcoming? Less deferential? Wasn’t that what she wanted? Where had he gone wrong?
At last, she cleared her throat and said, “Well, anyway, I just wanted you to know that initiation is an option for you. If you want it. If, you know, you wanted to make yourself acceptable to Libyrarian girls.”
Oh. Po blinked. Oh, she…she wanted him. Pleasure and relief made him dizzy and he forced himself to swallow. She liked him and she wanted him as a consort. He wasn’t beyond hope after all.
Only she wanted him to render himself infertile for her. Po’s stomach lurched. Could he even refuse? What if hers was the only offer he got? What was he going to do? “Thank you,” he said. “I…I work in the infirmary tonight. I’ll…I’ll talk to Libyrarian Burke about it.”
She brightened. “Really? Great!” She gave him a grin and leaned in for a sideways hug. Her warmth and her scent made him giddy.
They came out into the Great Hall. High above them soared a vast dome pierced by skylights. Morning light filtered through to reflect on the polished stone surface of the floor. The large round chamber was lined with books, and interspersed about the perimeter were alcoves, one for each of the Seven Tales. At the second-story level a balcony ran all the way around the room, and in the center of the hall was a ring-shaped counter—the console where one could request books.
T
he Great Hall was a hub of activity at any time of day. Now, between breakfast and the first work shift, it was a bustling microcosm of the community as a whole. Though many people of all origins milled about in the open areas, there was an undeniable tendency for certain groups to cluster together. In the Alcove of the Fly stood Rossiter, Baris, and several other former members of Subaltern Chorus Number Five, the adolescent Singers who had accompanied the Redeemer to the Libyrinth after her imprisonment in their Corvariate Citadel.
The older Singer males and the citizens of the Corvariate Citadel congregated in the Alcove of the Fish, where they often played instruments and sang. At the moment, a red-headed Singer was strumming a hand-held harp and several women sat around him, listening. Po liked the music, though the worshipful looks on the women’s faces made him uncomfortable.
At the opposite side of the Great Hall, in the Alcove of the Lion, Vorain and a number of the other Ilysian women stood about trading jokes with several village Ayorites. The women of his country got on well with the people from the villages of the plain. All of the Ilysian women had been soldiers, and most of them came from farming families, so they had that in common. And the Ayorite attitude regarding men and women was not in such sharp contrast with theirs, as was, for instance, that of the patriarchal Singers.
The Libyrinth Ayorites, those who were servants here prior to the Redemption, gathered in the Alcove of the Dog, and the Libyrarians clustered around the central console, along with several others who were close advisors of the Redeemer.
Now Haly herself stood there, holding hands with her consort, a Singer boy named Gyneth. Burke and Peliac were there as well, all of them listening to that old Singer, Siblea.
Po watched the old man hold forth. He was obviously comfortable talking in front of other people. There wasn’t a hint in his posture or his face to indicate any awareness of himself as a pompous old windbag. But of course he was much more, and much worse, than that. Po’s gaze strayed to the scar on Haly’s cheek. Back at the Corvariate Citadel, Siblea had been Censor Siblea, a high-ranking priest in their hierarchy. It had been his job to punish people for disobeying the Singer laws. Rumor had it that he’d given Haly that scar.
The deranged perversity that put a man in an occupation that would feed his violent tendencies was exceeded only by the injustice of the fact that he still lived. At home, a man like that, who had done harm to a woman, would be dead and his family in disgrace. But, Po reminded himself, his home was no longer his home. He was stuck here, where a degenerate like Siblea was not only forgiven his crimes, but listened to with respect by the Redeemer herself. His stomach turned.
Hilloa squeezed his arm and nodded toward the group at the console. “Come on, I’ve got something to show them. They’ve been on to the concept of dimensions lately, and last night I had an idea!”
Unable to refuse, Po’s stomach tightened as Hilloa dragged him ever closer to Siblea and the others.
“…and what this book says is that seconds after the Big Bang—which they say is how the universe began—the expansion of matter created a standing gravity wave that emanated a sound,” said Siblea.
“Do you think that was the Song?” asked Haly, her voice tinged with awe. It made the hair on Po’s arms stand on end, to hear her speak so to such a man.
“What else?” said Siblea.
“Wow,” said Hilloa, joining the circle. “That’s amazing.”
Siblea glanced at her in surprise and then looked back at the others. But now everyone was greeting Hilloa. To his relief Po, who hung back, was largely ignored, apart from Haly, who smiled at him and gave him a little wave.
Hilloa continued. “I wonder if what Siblea is saying connects with…I had an idea last night for a way to visualize the concept of dimension.” She reached into her satchel and drew out an empty sack of the kind used to store barley, and three silverleaf twigs fastened together at their midpoints, each perpendicular to the others. “Hang on.”
“Sound is a form of vibration.” Siblea kept on talking as if Hilloa wasn’t even there. Others in the group shifted uneasily, but he went on. “Perhaps everything we perceive, all the myriad parts of the universe, are no more than the same kinds of particles oscillating at different frequencies.”
“Right,” said Hilloa. “That’s one way to look at it. Particles and wavelengths. But you can also think of it geometrically. Or I mean, a geometrical approach can put the wavelengths in context.”
Siblea stared at her, clearly affronted. “I hardly think that geometry is relevant here.”
Po stepped forward at the dismissive tone Siblea used to address Hilloa. “Why don’t you give your mouth a rest and listen to what she wants to tell you?”
Everyone turned to stare at Po. What? What had he done now? He hadn’t even called Siblea an old man, though he deserved it, and so much more. Silence fell over the group as he and Siblea stared at each other. Inside, Po begged Siblea to react the way any normal male would. One step, one single threatening movement from Siblea was all the excuse he needed to take the old man apart the way he’d wanted to ever since he’d heard of him. Maybe he didn’t have to wait.
And then, just as he was about to abandon waiting, Haly laughed. “Po is being a bit confrontational about it, but the essence of his suggestion is solid, Siblea,” she said. “Let’s all hear what Hilloa has to say.”
And just like that, the tension in the group evaporated. Well, almost. Po kept staring at Siblea, who now pretended that he did not exist. “Of course, Holy One,” said the old goat. And he turned to Hilloa. “Please proceed.”
She hesitated just a moment, and then her enthusiasm came back to the fore. “Okay, see, what we normally think of as space is made up of three dimensions. Each of these sticks is one such dimension—height, width, and depth. Only I think those are arbitrary designations that we lock ourselves into, conceptually. She picked up the sack. “Now this is nothing right now. We know the bag can hold stuff, but it’s empty, flat, without space. This is the fabric of existence with no dimensions to fill it.
“But if we put the sticks in the bag…” She did so and then pulled the fabric tight around the sticks, showing everyone the bulge in the bag. “Now, it has space. Say this is a universe. It exists because it has dimension. And that’s all any universe really is. It’s a bundle of sticks, creating a space within the fabric of existence.
“And where all this connects with the Song is that these sticks can be made out of anything. We call them height, width, and depth, but what does that really mean? Couldn’t they just as easily be sounds, or ideas? They could be stories, like Time and the Seven Tales, or they could be the Song, or the Name of the Ocean.” She looked at Po as she said that last part, and winked at him. He grinned.
“Wow,” said Burke. “That is something. I am going to be thinking about that all day. That could be a way to bring the Seven Tales into context with the rest of what we know about physics and the nature of existence. Thank you, Hilloa.”
“Yes, thank you,” said Haly. “This is why we are going to be okay,” she said. She looked at Siblea, who stood quite still, his face carefully neutral. “Because we have so many smart people using their minds.”
The group broke up as people dispersed to their various work shifts. Hilloa went off without a backward glance, but Haly came up to Po as he was turning away and said, “I understand why you spoke as you did to Siblea. I’m not blind to what he was doing, and I will address it with him. But I want you to do me a favor, and leave it to me, okay?”
The rest of the day, Po’s thoughts ran in circles. A beautiful Libyrarian girl wanted him. But she expected him to render himself infertile for her. What if it wasn’t temporary? He’d be ruined. Why would she want a male that she couldn’t get babies off of? She said that was exactly what she wanted, but surely she’d change her mind. Then what would he do?
“Po?” Libyrarian Burke’s voice broke him out of his reverie. “I think that long grass is ready by now.”
He looked down at the mortar and pestle he’d been using. The pale green long grass leaves were nothing but pulp. He and Burke sat at the worktable in the infirmary. It was late. He’d already given Yolle her dose of Ease and attempted kinesiology on her, an effort aided not at all by his distracted state. Now they were preparing aspirin. Outside, the settlement was quieting down for the night.
Burke’s smile was kind. “What’s on your mind tonight, Po?”
“Do you have a consort, Libyrarian?”
Burke blinked. “A…well, I suppose, in a manner of speaking. Libyrarian Talian and I have been companions to each other for many years.”
“Oh.” Po couldn’t keep the disappointment out of his voice. He’d hoped that she would say no. He’d hoped she would ask him to be her consort. But that was ridiculous. Someone like Burke, a woman of eminence and maturity, would not need to resort to a calfling like him. A little voice inside him suggested that he accept Hilloa’s offer while he still could. “Is Libyrarian Talian initiated?”
“Of course.”
“But you still like him? You’re not…disappointed that you can’t get a child off of him?”
Burke laughed. “Oh, I am long past my time for having babies, Po. And I’ve already had two. More than most Libyrarians can hope for.”
“Off of Talian?”
“One of them, my son, Glai.”
“But you haven’t put Talian aside, even though you didn’t get a daughter?”
“Of course not.”
They worked in silence as Po absorbed this. “Hilloa wants me to take the Libyrarian initiation.”
“Ah.”
“So it is true, then? That you do an operation on the boys to make them infertile?” It had occurred to him that Hilloa and her friends might have been playing a joke on him. The whole thing sounded so outlandish.